OCZ Octane 512GB SSD review -
Specifications and Features

So the first Octane sample from OCZ has arrived, and they figured in their traditional "SSDs Gone Wild" mindset to submit this HUGE 512GB version.

Initial tests immediately surprise is, this product can keep up with any SandForce SSF-2281 SSD product like the OCZ Agility and Vertex 3 and Intels latest and greatest as well.

Once it will become available in the stores you'll notice two Octane lines, a 3Gbps version of the Indilinx Everest controller and asynchronous NAND Flash memory while the second will pack a 6Gbps SATA interface and faster synchronous NAND Flash memory. That SATA3 version as such will deliver speeds of up to 560MB/s of bandwidth in read performance and a very nice 400 MB/sec in write performance.

Capacities will start at 128GB and can go all the way up to 1TB while the memory chips found inside are built by IMFT.

OCZ already mentioned that Octane solid state drives have great performance when dealing with compressed data compared to other drives, we'll check that out of course. But that means with large files like ISO, MP3, movies, etc this SSD should be a beast. So sequential read and write performance should be staggering.

OCZ Octane

1TB

512GB

256GB

128GB

NAND Type

25nm Intel Sync MLC

25nm Intel Sync MLC

25nm Intel Sync MLC

25nm Intel Sync MLC

NAND

1TB

512GB

256GB

128GB

User Capacity

953GiB

476GiB

238GiB

119GiB

Random Read Performance

Up to 45K IOPS

Up to 37K IOPS

Up to 37K IOPS

Up to 37K IOPS

Random Write Performance

Up to 19.5K IOPS

Up to 16K IOPS

Up to 12K IOPS

Up to 7.7K IOPS

Sequential Read Performance

Up to 560 MB/s

Up to 535 MB/s

Up to 535 MB/s

Up to 535 MB/s

Sequential Write Performance

Up to 400 MB/s

Up to 400 MB/s

Up to 270 MB/s

Up to 170 MB/s

MSRP

TBD

$879.99

$369.99

$199.99

All four Octane SSDs will include 2x nm-class MLC Flash memory chips as well as 512MB of fast DRAM cache. Indilinx works with a large memory cache, whereas SandForce uses a segment of the NAND flash the cache. That's the essential difference really.

The OCZ Octane SSDs come with the company's proprietary NDurance technology that promises to extend the life of the NAND memory chips installed and also include built-in support for 256-bit AES encryption.

The SATA3 models just started listing in the stores here in the Netherlands and pricing is as follows:

OCZ Octane 128 GB costs 172 EUR

OCZ Octane 256 GB costs 309 EUR

OCZ Octane 512 GB costs 775 EUR

OCZ Octane 1024 GB TBA

So these are introduction prices, once they get in stock we think another 105 will be shaved off the price fast enough. But let's have a look at the product shall we?

OCZ Octane 512GB SSD reviewAfter testing the OCZ Octane, we can only agree, the names does the product justice. The Indlinx Everest based SSD is massively impressive and can compete with the best SSDs on the market.